Override
by Inyri Ascending
Summary: Everyone deserves to be free- even him. When Hawke finds a way to loose Fenris' bonds, she turns to Anders for help. Dragon Age II: Spoilers through Act 2.


Author's note: For CypherOfTyr.

* * *

><p><strong>Override<strong>

Hawke bursts through the door into the clinic with a book clutched in her hands; Anders, half-sleeping and half-drunk, barely stirs from his chair. She has been here so many times in the last weeks, so full of hurt and hate directed and misdirected- at him, at her mother's killer, at mages, at herself- that he simply sits and lets her rage drift over him until it diminishes.

(She fuels him, and Justice, in a way. He knows the world is unfair, so unfair that there are days he cannot bear it and he recedes back into his now-shared body, so unfair that there are days when he can no longer distinguish between friend and foe and he kills the innocents he has sworn to protect. Her anger is proof their work is not finished.)

She thrusts the book at his chest and he looks up, startled.

"Can you cast this ritual?" The book is open to a dog-eared page, spattered with faint bloodstains and covered in fine script. Her eyes are fevered.

He takes the book and scans it, briefly. Binding, unbinding, transferring- "In part, I think... but why? Where did you even get this book?"

"I think Quentin used it when he made his monster, when he killed Mother. I found this in his pocket. Look!" She points at one line of text, the razored tip of her gauntlet nearly piercing the paper. "Look where he got it from, Anders."

His lips move silently with the words. "_Created initially by the magister Danarius to bind a single living subject permanently to a controller individual, the spell was then refined by-"_

"Danarius bound Fenris' will with lyrium, and now we can free him." Her fingers grasp his shoulders tight enough to bruise. "You can use the cellar as a workshop. We can fix it. He'll be safe."

He ducks under her arm, slipping sideways off the chair and gaining his feet. "I won't promise you anything, Hawke, you've barely shown me the ritual. For that matter, give me one reason why I should help him."

"You selfish bastard." Hawke scowls and takes a step back, yanking the book from his hand. "I helped you get to Karl, I helped you into the Gallows even though your Tranquil Solution was nothing but paranoid bullshit and now I'm asking for your help and you want a reason?" She turns sharply on her heel. "Forget it. I'll ask Merrill."

"Merrill?" He snorts, grabbing her by the elbow and turning her around to face him even as she starts to walk away. "Fenris won't let her within ten feet of him- she might be the only person he trusts less than me. He hates me, in case you've forgotten."

She pulls her arm away. "So give him a reason not to."

"I can't-"

_He will never accept us. _

_**Shut up. I didn't ask you. **_Eyes closed, he turns his attention inward.

_He'd like nothing more than to kill us, and you want to set him free? Fool. There will be nothing left to stop him. _Justice's voice echoes in his head and he has the decided impression of folded arms and a disapproving smirk.

_**Everyone deserves to be free, Justice, even him.**_

Anders opens his eyes again, gritting his teeth with the effort of suppressing Justice's reply. As the abuses within the Circle have escalated he has become increasingly erratic and unpredictable; it is no longer safe to allow him control. Justice was perfectly rational, once, untouched by the resonances of emotion. Now he is blood and death and vengeance and precious little else, and worse for him he's defeated his own argument.

Everyone deserves to be free. Even Fenris.

He sighs, and holds out his hand to her. "I'll look over it, Hawke, and let you know. I'll do what I can."

"He was sure you wouldn't do it." She laughs in delight and lunges at him, throwing her arms around his neck. Her skin is warm against his. "Thank the Maker." Her lips brush his cheek, ever so faintly. "Thank you."

He takes a single startled breath before a howl of protest fills his mind and his vision starts to fade. She smells of burnished steel and damp leather and crushed wildflowers, and he turns his head toward her to breathe in more deeply, to cling to something on this plane and not be shunted inside-

His mouth meets hers for a scant second before her fist catches his jaw and he staggers. He raises his hand to his face and it comes away wet; she is standing with one hand over her mouth, the other still clutching the little book.

"Anders, I-"

_Fool._

He cannot hold on any longer. "Go, Hawke. Now."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean-" She holds the book out to him again, and he can barely close his fingers around it.

The world blurs and fades away, the battle lost. "Go!"

She turns and flees.

* * *

><p>Three days later, a ragged child knocks at the house with the hawk above its door. When a young woman dressed in black answers (as he was told she would) the boy thrusts a rolled-up scroll into her hand. She breaks the wax seal and her eyes flicker over the paper.<p>

He waits. _There will be a return message_, he was told.

A smile brightens the lady's face. "Tonight," she says. "Tell him tonight." She presses a bright copper coin into his palm and closes the door.

* * *

><p>"It's going to hurt, you know." He keeps a step ahead of Fenris on the way down to the cellar, raising his hand every few paces to brush against the torches. They spring to life with blue-white magefire and cast shadowless light against the walls; he prefers real fire, all things considered, but torches eventually burn down and his work here may take a very long time.<p>

"I imagine it will hurt a great deal," Fenris shrugs. "If it will protect us from Danarius, I'll endure it."

"Protect us?" He turns, looking back over his shoulder. "Your master is looking for his lost dog, and we're pulling the leash out of his hands- metaphorically speaking. I fail to understand how that affects anyone else, except that perhaps we'll miss you when he drags you back to Minrathous."

The elf lifts his fingers to eye-level, wiggles them and lets his markings flare. "Did Hawke ever tell you about the first time I ran from Danarius?"

They reach the bottom of the steps, the deepest room of the old Amell estate, with the passage to Darktown and the clinic locked and barred. He gestures at the barricaded door. "Since her mother died- no, actually, since the tunnels, where 'I murdered that helpless mage-girl,' the first words she'd spoken to me that weren't curses were 'can you cast this ritual?'. So, no, she did not."

"Anders, you didn't kill that girl- that was that demon you insist on calling Justice." Fenris sighs. "I was there, if you recall."

"Spirit, not demon." He unshoulders his satchel and glances around, taking in the space. The furnishings are spare: a heavy wooden table, a single chair, a makeshift workbench of two boards perched on empty barrels. They will suffice. "And it doesn't matter who did the killing, not really. Dead is dead."

_It doesn't matter? Please, continue to delude yourself._

He had hoped himself finally rid of the nagging voice in the back of his mind- he's tried so many things since the first days when it became clear that the two of them would never agree: not about Hawke, not about how to deal with the Templars, not even about the manifesto. He has lost track of the number of times he returns to the pages to find half the lines crossed out with scribbled criticism inked into the margins.

(The alcohol failed dismally, in particular. He-they, really- spent two days blindly drunk, arguing between themselves and stumbling nauseous through Darktown back to the clinic to sleep; when they woke, Hawke was there with the little spellbook.

They still argue which of the two initiated it, whether it was Anders or Justice or both of them in a single sudden moment of consensus, and why- he isn't sure if he loves her, or wants her, or if he wants her only because he's seen them together, seen Fenris' hair mussed and the bruises on Hawke's neck and if he cannot have _him_ then perhaps she is the best and closest thing- but the fact remains that after the kiss the back of her gauntlet left an impression on his cheek that lasted for hours, and ever since he regained control of himself it had been much quieter inside his head.)

Fenris gets within two paces of the table and stops, muscles stiffening and jaw clenching; he reaches out his hands toward it, fingertips just brushing the surface. "The first time I ran from Danarius, I sheltered with a group of rebels. You'd have liked them, actually." The corners of his mouth turn up. "Fighting against their oppressors."

"And when Danarius found you, he killed them?" He reaches into the satchel, setting his supplies in neat rows on the boards: thick leather straps, five half-burned candles, Hawke's little book, a few scraps of parchment covered in frantic scrawls, a palm-sized little box inlaid with jade carvings (he spent nearly every copper of his earnings from the Deep Roads on the box and its contents; whether they were truly carved by hand by the finest dwarven craftsmen and owned by a Tevinteri healer as the trader promised, the needles are still lyrium and they still work and no matter how vehemently Justice complains, they would have lost three patients in the last week alone without them).

"No." Fenris takes another step closer, rests his hands flat on the tabletop, his tattoos blue-white reflections of the burning magelight torches. "I killed them. He reached out his hand to command me and I killed every single one of them, and cursed him with every sweep of my blade."

"Oh." He arranges the candles in a precise five-cornered pattern but does not light them, opens the box and runs one finger over the thin little needles. "Well. Let's not let that happen." The spellbook falls open at his touch, eager to be used.

"We are ready, then?" His head is bowed over the table, a shock of white hair falling across his eyes. "What would you have me do?"

_Do not do this._

"Remove your armor."

"But we hardly know each other." Fenris arches a brow.

Taking the straps in hand, he fastens them one by one to the table-legs and leaves the ends dangling. "I need to see your markings, to use them as an anchor for the ritual and modify the binding."

One gauntlet, then a second, hit the flagstones with a sharp clang, and his fingers have the laces of his chestplate half-undone before he pauses. "Modify. Not destroy?"

"Not without blood magic, no- but with lyrium I can alter them, tying control to your own will instead of another's." He shrugs, and smiles. "It's a workaround, to be fair, though one I'm rather proud of. Lie down, please."

Fenris lays the rest of his armor aside, climbing smoothly onto the table's surface. "It will serve. Let it be done."

One by one, he draws the leather bands around wrists and ankles, one wide strap across slim shoulders and a last, heaviest of all, widthwise across tattooed hips. Fenris starts at the first touches of the straps and tenses, swearing softly in a mix of Arcanum and a language neither he nor Justice understand, then closes his eyes, chest rising and falling, rising and falling. He turns back to the workbench, lighting the candles with a touch, and takes up the book and box.

"Fenris." The elf's eyes flutter open at the sound of his voice as he leans over the table. "When I release you, put your hand into the light to complete the binding- but whatever I do now, you must not move until I tell you."

He nods, once. "Anders?" His fingers brush against the mage's robes. "Thank you."

"Thank me when we're through." He lifts the first needle from the box and taps it with a fingertip- one, two, three. It sinks, just so, into the tattooed line atop one foot; Fenris hisses.

_Do not do this, Anders._

He continues his work, chanting as he goes, sharp-tipped needles connecting foot to thigh to chest to chin, lyrium-lines glowing when pierced by lyrium-needles.

_Think, Anders._ _You would set him loose, uncontrolled? _

_**Everyone deserves freedom. **_Tap, tap- at the crown of the head. The table creaks, Fenris straining at the straps.

_And what of the mages he may kill, when he is free? _He can feel Justice now, pushing at the boundaries that separate them; he grits his teeth, picturing the wall that holds the spirit at bay.

Tap, tap- right shoulder, then left, and a strangled shout.

_He could be useful. _

Tap, tap- one needle remains, Fenris' body rigid and radiant white.

_I cannot permit this course of action, Anders. You leave me no choice. _

The energy within the room surges dangerously and for a moment he must turn his focus to salvaging the spell, on chanting and light and candles and Fenris beneath his hands, and in that instant the barrier falls. He cannot move, cannot speak, cannot breathe.

He cannot stop it.

_**You cannot do this! **_

Justice's voice is cold. _He will be useful. _

The torches gutter and flicker out, the room lit by cold blue light; his hand moves of its own accord to place the last needle at the base of the breastbone. As the tip pierces flesh, Fenris' eyes snap open and brilliant white light spikes toward the ceiling-

When his hand enters the light, both of them are screaming.

_Fin_


End file.
